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Blog Security

posted by McFrozen on July 22, 2002

So I spent part of the weekend trying to figure out if there is a way to have an "authors-only" category, which would allow us to post stuff on the same blog without the general public being able to see it. I think it should be possible, and I have a feeling the answer is staring me in the face, but I haven't found it yet.

Our other option is to put a username and password on the entire site. You can see how that would work on my test blog. Username: Darby, password: Crash (case-sensitive).

It never occurred to me that you guys might not want your names plastered all over the internet. I've been working to get us listed on search engines (okay, not really hard, but some), not trying to obscure us. I just never thought about it. It's second nature to me at this point to try to draw attention to any web site that I set up.

When I finally get time to think about setting up some of the stuff we talked about back in December, I do want that to be public. I want that to get a lot of attention. Just so everybody knows.

Now, Mike's funnies below notwithstanding, there are documented cases of people losing their jobs over things they've posted on personal blogs, and I certainly don't want that to happen here. Nor do I want any of you to feel like you can't be as free as you want to post whatever you want. So if the password protection for the site as a whole would make anyone more comfortable, I can have it set up in a matter of minutes.

Please comment.

Comments

mike's funnies below?
yes, i know their shaped funny but i still don't like having them called that. a bit sensitive you know.

Posted by: dick at July 22, 2002 10:28 AM

they're shaped funny and sensitive?

Posted by: mccreath at July 22, 2002 10:38 AM

Given the December idea, I'd rather have the site up and accessable rather than lock it down with an ID/password. As we can modify our ID's (case in point) if needed, I think that's as far as we need go with all this business. Plus, as damn smart as we are, I'd feel negligent if we didn't share our genius with the world!

Posted by: Hoyt at July 22, 2002 10:56 AM

In a related bit, it occured to me that we are making our addresses vulnerable to spam by having them linked to our names here. I know web spiders (is that term?) scour the net collecting such e-mail adresseses to give us Viagra, debt relief and hot cum slurping teen whores on live video (erm - maybe this is not a bad thing).

Anyway, I'm going to add a "DELETETHIS" in my address when I post to slow them down a bit.

Posted by: kong at July 22, 2002 04:00 PM

i hate that we have to adjust our behavior for stupid spambots. there's a new ring in hell for marketing people who use those.
hey, mcDinkle, can you recommend a good spam fighting tool?

Posted by: dick at July 22, 2002 04:10 PM

King, for what it's worth, parts of the email addresses are encoded so the spambots stand less chance of reading them. Of course, spam is an arms race, so eventually the spambots will learn to read the munged code. And adding extra stuff to your address is a sure way to foil them.

Mike, if you're using OSX or a *nix variant, there's something called "SpamAssassin" that's apparently pretty effective, but it takes a little bit of working in the shell. Their site seems to be down right now, but the URL is https://www.spamassassin.org. Ben, the programmer half of Ben and Mena who bring us the fine movable type product, has written a tutorial for getting it running on OSX.

As Hoyt mentioned a few days back, if you're using Windows and the Outlook 2000 or XP client, there's a company called Cloudmark that has created a system called SpamNet where you install a plug-in that scans a database for known spam and sends it to a spam folder. If spam does land in your in-box, then you click a button to add it to Cloud Mark's database, and it will be blocked for everyone using the system. (They're going to be adding support for Outlook Express, but I don't know if they'll extend it to the Mac. That's a whole different ball of fish.) I've been using SpamNet for a few days here at work and it's been trouble-free.

Posted by: mccreath at July 22, 2002 06:13 PM

I'll have to try SpamNet on my work cornpewter; haven't as yet run it on the home one either, but I use AdAware, anti spam software from Zone Alarm, and also run through a router, so my home computer's ip address et al are pretty well hidden from the world (so far, anyway). The LinkSys router has probably been the singlemost bestist thing I've purchased as of late, I really like having a personal firewall. Price Grabber has deals on them all the time, too (https://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=220898/ut=40840056d83fd519).

Posted by: Hoyt at July 23, 2002 08:30 AM

i have no real comments to make cuz all of yall know WAAY more than I do about all this. I do know that I only look at this while at work, and ive been doing that too much, and will be cutting way back anyway, so perhaps that's my own solution

Posted by: Rict at July 23, 2002 09:02 AM

Doing more work for The Man is NEVER a solution. Shame on you, Rict!

Posted by: Hoyt at July 23, 2002 10:13 AM

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